Vincentian History in Asia

To the present there seems to be an appreciable interest, research, and writing on the more than 300 year history of the Vincentian presence in China. The Vincentian Studies Institute has given a number of research grants to support this scholarship, and we've published a number of articles. The Vincentian Heritage Journal is always looking for articles as well. Part of our hope in starting the VHRN is to encourage scholarship in all aspects and all geographic areas where the Vincentian tradition has had an impact. In particular, we wish to encourage lay scholars. Besides China of course there is the long Vincentian presence in the Philippines and more recent presences elsewhere (Japan and Korea). Several of the scholars who have been invited to join the VHRN are presently working on China research and our hope is that they will be lively contributors to our discussions.

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Thank you so much for this post! While the post is from 2011, I hope there are still others around writing on the Vincentian presence in China. I am currently a doctoral student planning to write on the Vincentians in China, so I am eager to meet others who share this interest!

John Harney works on China/Vincentian China. John teaches at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. Also, Alan Sweeten (who is now retired) is still actively researching..... The Vincentian Studies Institute at DePaul has research money available for doctoral students and post-doc scholars. For the American Vincentian involvement in China there are great records here at DePaul and at our Eastern Province archives in Philadelphia. Of course the archives at the Vincentian mother house in Paris and the archives of Propaganda Fide in Rome are always very rich resources.

Great, thanks for the reminder about John Harney (I saw his chapter in the recent edited volume Chinese Catholicism by Cindy Yik-yi Chu), and for the heads up about Alan Sweeten's retirement. At any rate, I have been looking around at DePaul's Vincentian history resources online, like the whole of the Annales de la congrègation de la Mission, and it is wonderful that there is so much Vincentian history digitized and available. Here at Georgetown U where I am studying, we have some resources on Catholicism in China but of course most of it is Jesuit-related, so I am extremely grateful for these pointers as I begin to search for resources on the Vincentian presence in Republican Era China. Certainly I will be going to the archives in Paris and France, and will look into these other resources you mentioned! I am so excited about all this! I have loved the Vincentian charism since 2008 when I was an undergrad going through the RCIA process to convert to Catholicism, when I was looking for a confirmation saint and came across Louise de Marillac.